


Five Times Vax and Percy Might Have Met +1 Time They Did

by aunt_zelda



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Character Death, Corruption, Escape, M/M, Murder, Negotiations, Parallels, Robbery, Sex for Favors, Sexual Tension, What-If
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-09
Updated: 2017-07-09
Packaged: 2018-11-29 18:26:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,477
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11446536
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aunt_zelda/pseuds/aunt_zelda
Summary: Five alternate meetings for Vax and Percy in different situations, if Vox Machina had never formed. Plus one where I imagine how they did meet the first time in canon.Warning: not all of the imagined scenarios are happy ones.





	Five Times Vax and Percy Might Have Met +1 Time They Did

1.

The carriage stops abruptly, jostling Percival from his doze. He isn’t far from Whitestone, perhaps a league or so, deep in the forest. There are raised voices outside. He leans out of the carriage window and finds himself face to face with an arrow, drawn back on the string of a longbow. 

“Out.” The woman holding the bow snaps. “And keep your hands up.”

Percival does as he’s told, carefully exiting the carriage. The drivers are standing near the horses, hands raised, looking equal parts angry and ashamed. A large bear is keeping the horses anxious and frozen in place. 

“Hello, handsome,” a second bandit – a highwayman? – steps forward, almost the mirror image of the woman with the bow. “Apologies for the interruption, but we’ll be out of your way in no time at all.”

His hands are on Percival in an instant, seeking wealth and stripping it from him. Watch, purse, even the buckle to his belt, are taken. Percival fumbles quickly to keep his trousers from falling around his knees – there is, after all, a lady present, even if she is holding a loaded bow and pointing it at his chest. 

“Your ring, sir,” the highwayman holds out a hand. “And then we’ll take our leave.”

Percival knows he ought to give it over, to meekly submit to this indignity. However he can’t stop himself from protesting. “Please, no …”

The highwayman glares. “Give it to me. Now.”

Percival gulps. “My mother gave it to me on her deathbed, please, it’s not … it’s not valuable. My belt buckle will fetch you more money, I swear it.”

There’s a knife now, in the highwayman’s hand. “Well now I want it even more.” He grips Percival by the shoulder and steers him back into the carriage. “Let’s have a conversation, handsome.”

“Brother, we don’t have time for this!” the woman calls out. “We have to get moving!”

Percival remains as still as he can, the highwayman’s hand on his arm, the knife pressing against his fingers. 

“I could cut your finger right off. I’ve done that before. Is this really worth all the trouble?” the highwayman drawls. 

“Please …” Percival whimpers. Perhaps that’s what the highwayman wants, to make a noble cower before him. If that’s what it takes, Percival will gladly do it. 

“I’ll make you a deal handsome. I’ll let you keep the ring, but you have to give me something else in return.”

Percival nods. “Anything, sir, please –”

The highway’s man face looms closer and closer, and then his lips are on Percival’s. 

Percival gasps, hands flailing. The highwayman’s tongue presses into his opened mouth, seeking, teasing. It’s obscene. Percival responds in kind, feels the highwayman’s surprise and delight. 

Then, all too soon, the highwayman draws back, smirking. His lips are redder now, though perhaps that’s just Percival’s imagination. 

“Keep your ring, handsome,” the highwayman winks. “I got more than I thought you had to offer.”

And then he’s gone, vanished into the forest. 

 

2.

The Judge considers the siblings brought before him: half-elves, dark of hair and infamous in reputation, one chained and the other not. 

“Sir, your sister committed a crime in this city, a crime for which there is only one punishment.” The Judge sighs heavily. It has been a long and exhausting day. He has half a mind to simply sentence the woman to swing at sunset and have done with it all. 

“I am certain we can come to an arrangement, sir,” the man’s voice is laden with promise, with possibility. 

The Judge has been propositioned before, many times. There is, he knows, a certain appeal to it. Gold leaves a trail of paper and public records. This sort of negotiation is … rather more private. 

He rises from his chair, goes to the door, and ensures it is locked. “If this is some ploy, the watchmen of the city know your faces. They will not allow you to escape the charge of my murder.”

“We’re not murderers,” the man almost sneers. “We have some dignity.”

“We are thieves, brother,” the woman says, shifting from foot to foot in her manacles. 

“Speak for yourself, Vex’ahlia, I’ve not been caught yet.” The man grins, turning his attention back to the Judge. “Quiet now, I’m negotiating your sentence down.”

He’s quite skilled. The Judge prides himself on lasting a decent stretch of time before spilling into the man’s mouth.

“Very well,” the Judge says, adjusting his clothing. He signs a document and hands it to the man. “Your sister is a free woman once more.”

Her brother smirks, wiping his mouth on the edge of his cloak. “Always a pleasure to see justice … dispensed.” 

Months later, it’s the man in chains and the woman pleading for his release. The Judge doesn’t waste time with pretending otherwise. He merely beckons, points to the floor before his chair, and leans back while the she … negotiates. 

Her brother glares all the while, but he doesn’t look away. 

 

3.

It isn’t hard to find his target. His Queen points him in the right direction, and her messengers flock to his target’s victims. Dead bodies litter the world, bearing strange wounds: holes torn through their bodies. 

_These weapons are far too powerful, my Champion. They should not exist for hundreds more years. You must destroy them, and their creator._

Vax goes where he is bid. 

The target is human, a young man with dark hair and streaks of black powder on his arms and under his fingernails. He’s barely more than a boy, really, though most people look young to Vax now. Vax feels old, feels tired, wonders when his Queen will let him age and finally rest. 

The boy calls Vax a fool, for putting his faith in a goddess. There are weapons that could kill the very gods, if he only stopped and listened, the boy says. 

Vax binds the boy to a tree and reads through his records. He finds lists of people who’ve been sold the blueprints to these weapons, addresses, cities. He asks the boy to confirm each name, each place. The boy is reluctant at first, but when Vax promises to spare his workshop, he relents. He confesses to everything. 

Vax memorizes it all, and then sets the papers alight. He melts down the weapons into molten metal, and then lets the forge burn until the workshop blazes like a torch. The boy protests, loudly, and Vax gags him. The boy wriggles free of his bonds and tries to flee, and Vax catches him. 

“You can’t stop what’s begun! I’ve set it all in motion!” the boy screams, thrashing wildly in Vax’s grasp. “I kept it all in my mind, I can still invent!”

“You could.” Vax agrees, his oldest dagger sliding into his hand. “But you won’t.”

The boy looks surprised when he sees the dagger sticking between his ribs. In all his calculations, he apparently never anticipated his own death.

Vax buries the body respectfully, places stones so animals won’t get at the remains.

 

4.

“Good evening.”

Whatever the Spireling was expecting, it wasn’t this. 

The man is young, for starters. Younger than the Spireling, who’s one of the youngest to reach such heights in the Clasp. He’s slight of frame and his clothes are modest but obviously rich. Walking in here, he ought to have been mugged within an inch of his life. He ought to have been kneeling, trembling, maybe even crying, by the time the Spireling arrived to meet with him. 

Instead, the man is sitting calmly at a table. He gestures to the other chair, like the Spireling is somehow lesser than him, to be beckoned and commanded like a common servant. 

The Spireling folds his arms. “What is your business here?”

“My business? I suppose you could say my business is … business.” The man chuckles. “Commerce, rather. Trade. Both above and, below the table, as it were.”

The Spireling’s lip curls. Normally he’d enjoy a bit of wordplay, but not with an aristocratic piece of fluff like this. 

“You are a man of action. Forgive me. I have come with a proposal for you and your organization, and I would be most obliged if you would hear it out.”

Glancing about at the dubious, paranoid faces of his people, the Spireling makes a decision. “Not in public. I have private rooms that are better suited for such audiences.”

“Naturally. Lead the way.” The man follows the Spireling down a series of hallways and into the Spireling’s private chambers. 

No sooner as the door shut, the Spireling has the man against the wall, knife to his pale noble neck. “You got a death wish?” he snarls, pressing the blade just enough to sting. “All you had to do was ask, there’s twenty out there who’d slit your throat for nothing.”

“Are you quite finished?” the man asked. He’s seemingly unaffected by this display of aggression. “You’ll want to hear this proposal, I promise.”

The Spireling blinks. “Who _are_ you?”

“A better question would be …” 

And suddenly there’s pain, blossoming across the Spireling’s chest. Electricity. He staggers back, sees the flicker of light on a metal gauntlet the man is sliding into a coat pocket. 

“… a better question would be, why am I so bloody confident in the face of you and your blade?” the man draws out a sheaf of papers. “I know you can read. You’re an intelligent man, for all your bluster. This is a fair offer. You will take it. I am willing to provide … incentives to entice you further.”

Still getting his breath back, the Spireling focuses on that last sentence. “Such as?”

“The blueprints to this, for example,” the man holds the gauntlet aloft briefly. “And, if you’ll forgive my forwardness, I have been informed quite extensively of your preferences …” the man draws forward, hands held up, and leans forward to kiss the Spireling.

The Spireling turns his head. “I’ll need a name, before we start on any of that.” He smirks. “And so I can remind you what it is, once I’ve screwed your brains out.”

That at least rattles the man a bit, visibly. 

The Spireling grins, and takes the sheaf of papers to peruse. “Think on that, get yourself out of those fancy clothes, and we’ll have a conversation.”

The man is crafty, and wins himself a far more favorable deal than the Spireling had initially intended. Regardless, the future negotiations prove an entertaining game for both of them. 

 

5.

His traps have been sprung, his spells have been exhausted, and it was all for naught. He is bloody, beaten, and condemned. The warlock has been felled. 

“Tell me,” the Champion of the Raven Queen asks, blazing with holy, righteous light in the ruins of the workshop. “Tell me why.”

“My sister,” Percival coughs. “My sister. She died. I … I had to bring her back. No matter the cost.”

A shadow crosses the Champion’s face. 

“She hated me for it,” Percival offers, though he knows to expect no mercy from a Champion of the Raven Queen herself. “When I brought her back, and she saw what I’d done in her name, to return her to life … she couldn’t stand it. She fought me, she fought Vecna’s influences … did she send for you, in the end?”

“Yes.”

Percival nods sadly. “I had thought as much.”

“She was granted eternal rest by my Lady. No one will ever drag her back to unnatural life again.”

Percival moans, though from fear or envy he isn’t quite sure. 

The Champion steps forward, arm raised. 

Percival holds up his hands. “Please! Please, promise me that you’ll burn my workshop!”

The Champion pauses. 

“There are papers here, things that … that man was not meant to know. That I should not have known. Things I’ve designed … they could bring about a generation of pain and destruction.” Percival shudders. The things Vecna whispered to him in the dark, the designs, the ideas, chaos and death reached across the continents. It cannot come to pass. It must not. 

The Champion nods. “I will raze this place to the ground, and burn your body with it.”

Percival sights with relief. “Thank you.”

“I do not do this for you. I do this for the good of the world, and at the behest of my Lady.” The Champion readies a dagger that seems to glow. “Are you ready?”

Percival steadies himself and deliberately bares his throat. “Yes.”

The knife slashes so quickly, Percival scarcely feels it across his neck. He’s dead before he hits the floor, and he does not rise again. 

 

+1

“Can’t you go any faster?”

Vax rolls his eyes. “Anyone else here know how to use lockpicks? No? I didn’t think so.” He continues to fiddle with the jail’s door. 

“Keyleth’s never been arrested before. I’m worried for her.”

CLICK.

“Well worry no longer.”

The party filters inside, Vax stealthing ahead to detect any guards or secret patrols. They’re fortunate, and locate Keyleth in her own cell, still smelling of booze and looking mortified. 

“I’m so sorry!” she whimpers, as Vax unlocks her door and lets the others see to her. 

Vax checks down the hallway, passing by several cells. Half are empty, the rest mostly contain drunks sleeping it off. 

One contains what, at first glance, Vax thinks is an old man. Taking a closer look he realizes it’s a boy, with his hair gone white. Not blond, but white as snow. Strange. He’s also chained, which suggests he’s more dangerous than the drunks. Vax steps closer to his cell, intrigued. 

The boy meets Vax’s gaze steadily. There are dark circles under his eyes, and he has the slightly pinched look of someone who hasn’t been eating well recently. 

“Please,” the boy says, voice clipped and aristocratic - another surprise. “Please, let me out. I have money: it’s yours if you release me.”

That would satisfy Vex’ahlia at least. Vax considers the boy. He doesn’t look particularly strong.

“Show me your hands.”

The boy holds up his shackled hands. Even in the dim light of the jail, Vax can see the calluses. Not a magic user then. A fighter perhaps, used to wealthy patrons? 

Well, they can always use another of those around. The SHITs need all the muscle they can get these days. 

“What are you in for?” Vax asks. If it’s rape, or hurting a child, he’ll kill the man without a word to the others. 

“I tried to kill someone powerful. I … failed.”

Vax snorts. “That’s enough to get you an interview.” He starts to work on the cell door. 

“Vax, where are you?” someone hisses into the darkness, in what they think is a quiet voice. 

“Making friends!” Vax calls over his shoulder. 

CLICK.

The cell door creaks open. 

“Well, come on then, handsome,” Vax nods. “This way.”

The boy follows him.


End file.
